Don't Forget to Write

Just Pete

I spent the next few days at my mother's house with family. Family and cousins from my Dad's generation were telling stories about him, about how he used to be the best street racer in town, and how marathons he ran when he was young. It all seemed so foreign to me. The idea that my fat, lazy, old dad, who I'd never seen move so fast as a jog, had ran marathons? And, he had the fearlessness and the skill to race his car down a dark mountain with no streetlights. And, beyond that, was the best at it? Where had all these stories been my whole life?

Eventually Sunday came around and everybody went back to their respective homes and jobs and lives, and I left my mother and my sister to go back to the city.

Bruno welcomed me home with a strong hug, and Milo gave me the kind of unconditional love and affection that we can only receive from animals. As was customary, Bruno and I went to Bob's.

Karen, Moose, and Diane were there. Nobody asked about Camila or school, Bruno must have told them. With the rapid succession of everything that had happened, I hadn't thought much about how I wasn't welcome back to CCNY. I was missing out, and I knew it. An affordable school with a history of greatness and some of the smartest professors on the east coast. It was a dream, and I had just woken up. For over a week I had been lonely in a way that only Camila's presence could have eased, but she was gone, and I made no attempt to contact her. Nor she me.

Bob, who after years of bartending had honed the conversational and eavesdropping skills better than most spies, must have heard about everything that had happened this week. He poured two shots from a bottle I had never seen before. The liquid was clear.

"This is my private stock. I break it out for only for special occasions, the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. And, strangely enough, it was given to me by an old friend who was Portuguese fellow. Have you ever heard of aquadiente?" He asked, butchering the pronunciation of the word.

"Oh, yes. My dad used to drink it." My brain shot back to flashes of a night, years ago. My dad taking too many shots of spirit in question and trying to fight me. Things thrown. Glass broken. His fist hitting my jaw. My hands on his chest as I pushed him to the floor. The sound of the door slamming as I ran away.

"Like moonshine's big bad brother," Bob said. "Strongest stuff I ever drank. Bad things come in threes, Petey. It should be only up from here on out. Now, if I may, another Irish toast."

"Please."

"May good luck find you at your worst

And bad love lose you at your best.

May your days be rich and full of wealth

And your nights be long when you need rest.

Before the devil knows you're dead

May you be in heaven, my friend"

We took the shots down, my throat and my stomach burned, but it felt good. Almost too good. "The man who gave that to me went by the name of Joao, we called him John here in the states. He was a lot like you. Good kid. Ya know that Portuguese and the Irish have a shared ancestry."

"They do?"

"That's right, they do. Joao was a bit of a history buff. From what he tells me, Ancient Portugal was inhabited mostly by Lusitanians, a fierce and advanced tribal group who fought off the Roman Empire for nearly a hundred years while the rest of the Iberian Peninsula, and the rest of Europe, had fallen so quickly. Those fierce people, those Lusitanians, came from the culture of the ancient Celts, who as you know, came from Ireland and Britain."

"No shit."

"Yes shit."

"So, Petey, I guess that answers the question," Bruno said, "You're white."

"Well, actually he'd be Lusophone," Bob corrected. "Lusophone refers to Europeans, South Americans, and Africans descendent of Portuguese culture."

"How do you know all of this?" I asked, a little embarrassed at his greater knowledge of my own culture.

He shrugged, "Like I said. My friend Joao was a history buff, and I was a good listener."

"Well, Lusophone. That's different," Bruno said.

"Yeah," agreed Moose, "but it's not the type of thing that shows up on the ethnicity categories when you're filling out a form. You only get the choice of White, Black, or Hispanic. My Arabian ass, for example, has to select 'white' most of the time."

"So then, what are ya Pete?"

"I dunno. I guess I'm just Pete. A New Yorker with Lusophone heritage. Who gives a shit about all this racial-hyphenating nonsense. Hispanic-American. Black-American. Does anybody really give a shit about race other than the government and racists? Isn't being an American enough?"

"Preach," Karen said from the back.

"Well, 'Just Pete', that's not a bad attitude, but it also ain't how the world works around here." Bob said, leaving to take care of customers.